Peak oil will be demand driven

We were supposed to run out of oil eventually. They called it peak oil.

But it will never happen now. At least not how you expected.

Can you imagine the early Stone Age humans worrying about running out of stones to make their tools? Or Bronze Age tribes arguing over what would happen to their society after all the bronze is melted up? Did the Iron Age civilizations debate about how to deal with “peak iron”? Maybe they subsidised less efficient tools made out of sustainable and renewable wood.

It probably never happened. Although, you never know…

What did happen is that we moved on. We found something better each time. Any problems finding the right stone, bronze or iron helped us move on by encouraging research and development efforts. Probably trial and error or accidental discovery back then.

The same is happening in the world of oil today. Each time the price spikes, alternative technology gets another boost. Eventually oil will cause the spike to impale itself on. Another source of energy will suddenly become stronger, more efficient, cleaner, easier to use and the all-important one – cheaper.

It looks like we might reach that tipping point very soon. More on that in a second.

What you need to understand is that peak oil will be a demand-driven phenomenon. Just as we didn’t run out of stones in the Stone Age, bronze in the Bronze Age or iron in the Iron Age, we won’t run out of coal or oil. We’ll move on to something.

It’s the transition phase that’s interesting. And the point at which you can position yourself to profit most as an investor. There’s one big rule. Don’t look to the government for guidance…

The diesel disaster

In the midst of humanity’s progress, you have governments wreaking havoc. From ethanol to diesel, as soon as the government gets involved in the process, it’s a mess.

I didn’t know about the diesel disaster until I discovered it today. It was hidden underneath all the VW emissions scandal news that dominated the headlines.

Having encouraged people to buy diesel cars by cutting excise duty, the government then discovered that diesel cars actually have higher poisonous emissions. Someone probably should’ve checked the emissions before we encouraged emitting them. But who would get in the way of a good political initiative?

Well the environmental group ClientEarth sued the British government for the damage it’s doing to the environment with its diesel policies. I couldn’t find any record of it supporting the diesel excise duty cut to reduce CO2 emissions in the first place, but it probably did.

Anyway, the high court ruled that the UK’s toxic air policies are so bad they breach EU law, which compels governments to implement decent efforts. Here’s my favourite part of Justice Garnham’s ruling on how to interpret the EU law: “I reject any suggestion that the state can have any regard to cost.” And that’s another reason to leave the EU!

So it looks like oil and its derivatives like gas are going to be targeted by the government. That’ll drive up their cost, which suits companies just fine. But their time is coming to an end altogether as the higher costs push alternatives to the realm of the possible.

Imagine if you were a bronze investor at the end of the Stone Age. Or an iron ore investor at the end of the Bronze Age. Or you bought oil stocks before the Royal Navy was refitted from coal to oil by order of a Mr Churchill before the First World War.

Your ancestors would probably still be living it up. Which begs the question, what comes after oil?

White diesel and the Electric Age

Now that you know about the diesel shemozzle, it’s a rather unfortunate name. But my friend Eoin Treacy is sticking with it.

It’s the resource that will power the coming age – the Electric Age. It’s white diesel.

The challenge of the Electric Age isn’t power generation, it’s distribution and storage: how do you get the power from a station to move a wheel or charge a phone where it’s needed? Our current infrastructure and battery technology isn’t efficient enough.

The infrastructure technology remains stuck for the most part. But battery tech is powering ahead. And that’s creating your investment opportunity.

A futurist economist from Stanford and a London-based tech investor formed the think tank ReThink X, which recently published its forecast on the car industry in the US. It’s mind-boggling stuff.

The economistsreckon that transport will become a service, not something we do for ourselves. Initially the trend is in delivery of the things we go out to buy and lift hiring like Uber. Then, as driverless and electric cars emerge, the trend will accelerate dramatically. The cost will be four to ten times cheaper per mile thanks to far higher utilisation rates of vehicles, lower maintenance costs and lower energy costs. It will only take ten years from autonomous vehicle approval before 95% of passenger miles are travelled by such cars.

All this is going to destroy the oil industry as we know it. From the ReThink X report:

As fewer cars travel more miles, the number of passenger vehicles on American roads will drop from 247 million to 44 million, opening up vast tracts of land for other, more productive uses. Nearly 100 million existing vehicles will be abandoned as they become economically unviable.

“Demand for new vehicles will plummet: 70% fewer passenger cars and trucks will be manufactured each year […]

The transportation value chain will deliver 6 trillion passenger miles in 2030 (an increase of 50% over 2021) at a quarter of the cost ($393 billion versus $1,481 billion).

Oil demand will peak at 100 million barrels per day by 2020, dropping to 70 million barrels per day by 2030.[…] This will have a catastrophic effect on the oil industry through price collapse (an equilibrium cost of $25.4 per barrel), […]

So what do all these electric autonomous vehicles need to power themselves? Batteries filled with white diesel – lithium.

ReThink X thinks lithium is important enough to put in its executive summary:

The geopolitics of lithium and other key mineral inputs to A-EVs are entirely different from oil politics. There will be no “Saudi Arabia of lithium.” Lithium is a stock, while oil is a flow. Disruption in supply of the former does not impact service delivery.

Imagine the Middle East without oil money. Or Scottish independence without oil money. How will US shale states fare? And what will happen to Russia’s stranglehold over eastern Europe if it doesn’t need Russian gas?

8 whole Heineken beer trucks on the road how impressive. Now tell me Cloggie where did the grain and other ingredients come from to make the beer? Heavy battery powered trucks out in the farm fields? Plowing, fertilizing, weeding and pest control all with the magic of alt energy power heavy battery powered equipment? When the grain and other ingredients were delivered to the brewery by 8 of the electric beer trucks how was the beer brewed to temp? When they went to bottle the beer where did the bottles come from? Was is at the electric alt energy beer bottle factory? Cloggie, dream on.

…that has as its goal to achieve “essentially CO2 free city logistics in major urban centres by 2030” and recognises that achieving this through the use of electric vehicles (EVs) is likely to eliminate other harmful pollutants in city centres at the same time.

The EU goal is to eliminate fossil fuel by 2050 and that includes all these agricultural machines you are referring to. If a truck can be electric, so can a tractor.

Clog, these alt achievements are admirable things but they are not going to scale globally so forget a climate change angle. Even if we could scale them it is likely climate change thresholds are breached and now self-generating. We forced the issue and now it is doing the rest. I know you heavily discount climate change but you still give it a nod so you can brag about your alt transition.

Your alt achievements are facing the biggest hurdle that will occur on the approach to high penetration of renewables into your energy web. You have a very long way to go in aggregate. In aggregate I mean all the other fossil fuel burning. I see transport especially heavy transport and agriculture as a very difficult goal. The standard electricity power is difficult enough with the supper grid and storage needed. When you add in transport it becomes a very expensive task.

Few here wants to discuss the economy because you know everyone thinks the economy may be bad but it is good enough. You have a huge bill ahead and despite your thinking Europe is richer than ever it is mired in a difficult economic situation that does not point to a robust economy that will be able to cover all these investments. I am talking when you approach the level of high penetration. There is a curve where these investments are made and they need to bring returns. Many think power is free once it is installed but there is more to it. There is a payback period, maintenance, and replacement but also many other additions that must be incorporated at high penetration levels. It seems free when it is installed into a grid at lower penetration levels. Once thresholds are crossed cost go up and many unknowns are yet to be faced.

The more complexity you add into your system the more vulnerable you are going to be to cascading failures from human and natural occurrences. These are also costs and challenges. You are dreaming if you think you can decouple from global predicaments of economy and malicious interference.

Having such grand goals is just more bureaucratic wonk that satisfy the sheeples and techno dreamers. What you are doing is admirable on many levels. This should be acknowledged but you don’t get bragging rights yet. You should get admiration and educational interest from others. You are an experiment not a force, yet.

Trying to know what is ahead is beyond all of us here. We are just speculating. It is far easier to see the challenges ahead and speculate on realism or not. It is far harder to shape and comment on an achievable goal far into the future. I don’t respect long term predictions because they are so embellished and controlled. They generally use habituated underlying assumptions and discount outliers. It is the outliers that cause the problems.

Your story is a story until you have real evidence of achievements. What you have done to date is impressive. I may be swayed with what you do in the next 5 years. Until then you are just crowing false optimism you don’t deserve. What you have done so far is the easy part and a part done while the global economy is still capable of participating in growth support. If you think you can do all this with just your Euro economy you are mistaken. You do realize you have to have markets to generate wealth to pay for all this. Even if the Euro economy decouples with its economy on some levels you still need your global export markets to allow such grand goals to materialize.

Davy on Wed, 17th May 2017 5:46 am

Clog, your electric weeding is being driven by a diesel farm tractor. What is your point? The electric side dressing is just side dressing that has been done for generations. You don’t need electric gadgets like that. A side dressing harrow is cheaper and just as effective. That is stupid techno nonsense.

You are not going to replace chemicals and diesel economically for large industrial AG monocultures. You then have the harvest and distribution that require huge energy requirements. I can see permaculture localism heavily influenced by Alts but not industrial agriculture. Going to local permaculture is going to lower food production dramatically. You will then need imports and the money to pay for imports. You then are just hiding the fossil fuel use in those markets suppling the imports.

Your alt revolution is not going to cover industrial agriculture. You will be priced right out of the market. The requirements to power industrial agriculture are daunting. If you add in doing it at a profit it becomes very daunting. It is still food = population. It still comes down to a wolf has to catch a rabbit in a situation of surplus energy. Business requires profit at some point. You should stick to your electric power generation you will look more impressive.

Davy on Wed, 17th May 2017 5:59 am

Clog, you like to reference the nationalistic sentiment as a force to conquer the NWO elites strangling Europe but then you talk about a Paris Berlin Moscow confederation. You are really talking about a confederation that will have to be a dictatorial in nature and really an Empire because it will have to control all of Eurasian and the near abroad. This is a story of sociopolitical contradictions.

“Despite the elites’ desperate hope that recent ‘losses’ in Holland France ‘prove’ the anti-establishment movement is fading (although they all saw soaring popularity), with Europeans ready to protest, there are still numerous regions urging secession…There have been 486 military conflicts in Europe in the last 2000 years and while the last decade or two has been ‘peaceful’, we suspect that will not last.”

“As BofAML’s Transforming World Atlas details, many areas in Europe have strong secessionist movements (e.g. Scotland, Catalonia, Basque, Flanders, Veneto) or have political parties agitating for greater ruling autonomy. European political union remains elusive, so does fiscal union, and monetary union is tarred by the fact that nine EU countries – soon to be eight – (Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Sweden, and The UK) do not use the Euro.”

Cloggie on Wed, 17th May 2017 9:13 am

You are really talking about a confederation that will have to be a dictatorial in nature and really an Empire because it will have to control all of Eurasian and the near abroad.

I don’t see why such a confederation would be inevitably dictatorial.

And neither do I see why PBM would have to control Turkey or China.

The #1 purpose of PBM would be to form a counterbalance against China, as well as preventing that the “old guard” would return to Washington after Trump. Because the first thing Washington would do if PBM would develop an anti-American stance, is travelling to China and set up a counter alliance.

…and help them overcome “the establishment” in a similar fashion as continental Europe helped American colonialists to become independent from the British.

joe on Wed, 17th May 2017 10:11 am

One of the problems with Cloggies ‘Europe’, is that he is spinning a false narrative. The unique nature of our current western peak economy which has stalled in real growth since peak oil and great recession (2005-2008) is that the ECB and FED have not stopped the fiat spiggot in relation to the actual economy. The cash that is STILL injected in western economies is simply vanishing. The scale of the recession is visible in global national debts which have ballooned. Italy, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, can only sell bonds because of the Euro, the Euro (new Reichsmark) is artificially weak because of the basket case econonies that use it. Europe is not one people and Macron in France plans to destroy the large state bodies that allow Germany to pillage Europes banks and resources only because the French dont compete. The idea of a Paris-Berlin-Moscow axis has been proposed before, by Napoleaon Bonaparte. Our unique financial times makes any kind of crazy idea or scheme seem possible but the reality is that fiat currency fails when you can no longer deal with debt and simply print money. Inflation must be kept low, we have done this by sending jobs to third world nations and creating a ‘services’ econony, all bullshit of course, its just that your fathers job became too expensive to be done here so you get a new less important job that pays less but seems allot due to inflation, the next step is impossible to fathom except by those will to leap. China wants a services economy, to do that it needs to make it more expensive to make things in China while also making it possible for Chinese workers to be able to afford goods. For America to dominate that system there has to be somthing new, somthing unknown, some are looking to space, some are looking to green (pah!), everyone else forsees the truth. The US cannot dominate the world econony forever, the Euro will be finished because the UK despite not being part of the Eurozone plays a vital role in subduing the ravenous wishes of Germany, a role the UK will no longer play because the UK would rather trade than dominate. Turkey and the UK and a ressurgent France will rise up and pummel Germany and Russia will be there to sell gas and oil for a long time to come and care nothing for stupid bullshit confederations.

Joe, giving massive amounts of free fiat to the selfish narcis at the top of the food chain in hopes the crumbs will trickle down is like giving free crack to the parents so that they’ll have more time to spend with the kids.

rockman on Wed, 17th May 2017 2:23 pm

mak – “There are now over 7,400,000,000 of us…”. Which reminds of something I spent much time researching but couldn’t come up with an answer: how much CO2 (call it H-CO2)) does the average person exhale every day. Granted insignificant compared to other individual sources. But then calculate

H-CO2 X 365 X 7.4 billion = tons of CO2 per year. I have no sense of that magnitude.

Cloggie on Wed, 17th May 2017 3:02 pm

“Mapping Europe’s Secessionist Movements”

Most of the hotspots mentioned in the Zerohedge article are bogus.

The only real ones are:

1. Catalonia
2. Scotland
3. Flanders

In that order, the rest is bogus.

Clog, you like to reference the nationalistic sentiment as a force to conquer the NWO elites strangling Europe but then you talk about a Paris Berlin Moscow confederation. You are really talking about a confederation that will have to be a dictatorial in nature and really an Empire because it will have to control all of Eurasian and the near abroad

Normally Paris-Berlin-Moscow would not happen as a fully-fledged confederation. But the overarching new geopolitical development in this century will be the rise of China, comparable to what the rise of the US and USSR were in the previous century.

Shortly after the inauguration of Trump, the Dutch leftist broadcasting organisation VPRO made a satire about Trump that went viral globally with tens of millions of viewers:

You have to watch the Dutch original first to understand all the others.

Oh and here is “American First, China second”. It is again copied from the Dutch original, only the last 6 seconds are different from all the other versions, where it is said: “OK, it is going to be America first, but can we be second?”.

Hilarious is the self-mocking Iranian video, that doesn’t even attempt to be second. For them it would suffice to come before Iraq:

Jean-Marie le Pen, the real defender of Europe and France and who doesn’t believe in the Anglo-Zionist holotale has declared that her daughter made a mistake in her anti-EU and anti-Euro rhetoric and he gets support from other within the Front National.

the Euro (new Reichsmark)

More British BS. The Germans didn’t want the Euro, but it was the price the French (Mitterrand) made them pay for German unification. 71% of the French still support the Euro. Get used to it.

The idea of a Paris-Berlin-Moscow axis has been proposed before, by Napoleaon Bonaparte.

More British BS. Napoleon was an usurper and never had any intention to set up a European confederation with (non-existent) Germany and Russia. The first who proposed it was Charles de Gaulle, because he wanted to kick British and Americans out of Europe (de Gaulle always had understood that WW2 was never anything else than an Anglo-Soviet assault against Europe, aided by the notorious British anti-Europeans).

the Euro will be finished because the UK despite not being part of the Eurozone plays a vital role in subduing the ravenous wishes of Germany, a role the UK will no longer play because the UK would rather trade than dominate. Turkey and the UK and a ressurgent France will rise up and pummel Germany

That’s the only wish in the sad lives of these British island dwellers: to “pummel Germany”. Joe has understood that Russia won’t join this time, unlike in WW1 and WW2, so now this little monster and Stalin groupie joe is confident he can craft an alliance with France and Turkey and destroy Germany once again. Jeez am I glad that the Muslims have taken over London and soon the rest of that spleeny island. May it be a Muslim colony, longer than Spain (800 years).

We would welcome the involvement of our European colleagues from the EU states in this partnership. This would make it truly concordant, balanced and all encompassing, and will allow us to realise a unique opportunity to create a common cooperation framework from the Atlantic to the Pacific – for the first time in history.

This map shows who was “on top” at the time. Everybody who is on top gets a century. Just like a human gets say 80 years and then dies.

Who is the next top dog? Not the UN as the no doubt Anglo creator of this graph imagined. China will.

Is this going to be a Chinese century? Not necessarily, provided we “whites” get our act together and form a geopolitical counter balance: Paris-Berlin-Moscow replacing the EU (mostly military alliance + euro + space program, etc.) and a sizable chunk of North-America.

Scenario?

Brexit first, is going to be extremely nasty, creating a ever-widening rift between an “emancipating” continental Europe and Anglosphere former overlord.

The EU will give up on waiting for the return of an Obama or another swampy candidate, grow a pair and begin to learn to stand on its own feet. The European Right will give up on abolishing the EU and euro and as a consequence will now gain political influence on a national and European level. The invitation by Putin to the EU, linked to above, to “join Eurasia” will be accepted and the PBM confederation will be a fact.

The situation in America will be stable as long as Trump remains in power. But on a street level the clashes between the antifa left and alt-right will increase in intensity. The swamp has yet to make up its mind whether they will simply sit out Trump until he leaves office or topple him before that date. The waiting is for the opportunity. The western globalist media are attacking Trump on daily basis.

When Trump will be gone, one way or the other and no successor in the same mold will be next president, expect the US political system to blow up. Battle cry: “if we can’t have a white America, we are going to create a new (smaller) white America”. Much will depend on the behavior of the US military: will they allow their tax farm to break apart? My tentative guess would be that they won’t.

Another possibility would be that after Trump has left office, the successor president will seek to reinforce US exceptionalism (=US empire) and try to regain dominance over the South China Sea. China could chose that occasion to finally challenge US dominance and tell the US to leave. A Washington mobilization effort could trigger a wave of secession to avoid having to fight a war in Eurasia. China could use the occasion to invade Australia and New Zealand and incorporate it as new Lebensraum, after Europe and Russia in quiet diplomacy made it clear to China that such a move will not lead to war. (“better Australia than Siberia”, you hear the Europeans think)

Europe at some point will declare itself as the guarantor of European-America, just like France and Holland supported the uprising of 1776 against the British.

This is how Anglosphere will come to its end.

Davy on Thu, 18th May 2017 5:04 am

“Chinese century?” How, just because it has so many people and such big industrial economy going on? That is what is going to ruin China. People that point to a Chinese century are thinking with 20th century associations. Asia is not going to be the next anything. Europe is likewise not going to be the next civilization center. This coming century is an end of globalism century. This process is of devolution and is about a century following this process. It is coming for the US, China, and Europe. It is about planetary decline and a civilization coming undone. It is about these two foundation of man decaying.

I am not sure how quick this will happen. In the meantime have your optimism but keep it balanced and realistic. Wisdom must be based on the right direction. We may have gyrations with tech accomplishments moderating this decline. A decline nonetheless. When I talk about these things it is not specific but general. We can talk specifics but to point to direction of something so big and all-inclusive we must be general.

Repetitive stories of the many shades of optimism that appear daily is not going to make a happy ending happen. When people pray really hard they think they are getting closer to something. Real prayer is about letting go of the grasping and about connecting not taking.

Cloggie on Thu, 18th May 2017 6:45 am

How, just because it has so many people and such big industrial economy going on?

Yep.

That is what is going to ruin China. People that point to a Chinese century are thinking with 20th century associations.

You seem to think that if an economy declines, it is game over for everything: civilization, nations, alliances, populations, ability to wage war.

Asia is not going to be the next anything. Europe is likewise not going to be the next civilization center. This coming century is an end of globalism century

What you are essentially saying: globalism = civilization. If globalism retreats, civilization will seize to exist and it is a waste of time to think about alliances, shifting centers of political gravity.

That’s rubbish. What you are doing is projecting the immanent US downfall from a position of planetary hegemony, onto the entire world (probably to save face).

But Europe, US, China, Russia, etc., will continue to exist as great powers and will have relations with each other, even if GDP per capita will decline (if that happens, not so sure about that).

Davy on Thu, 18th May 2017 7:41 am

“You seem to think that if an economy declines, it is game over for everything: civilization, nations, alliances, populations, ability to wage war.”

Nope, never said that you are inferring that. There are a whole range of possibilities and that is one of them. You on the other hand dismiss most alternatives to the evolution of the status quo towards a Eurasian century. You preach a Paris Berlin Moscow confederation dominance based on a Euro Alt energy economy combined with resources from a vast Russia. Somehow you think everyone will get along and the rest of the world is irrelevant.

Davy on Thu, 18th May 2017 7:47 am

What is rubbish is to think these other powers are not just as much part of globalism as the US and they can decouple from a US decline. What is also rubbish is to dismiss Europe, China, and Russia are not in decline which they clearly are. In fact they may be in worse decline and positioning for failure. This is especially true of China. Europe has little to be optimistic about any more than the rest of the other global powers. What you are doing is projecting a US collapse as a win for your new Eurasian century. Your relationships are based on old thinking from the 20th century and are obsolete in the 21st century.

onlooker on Thu, 18th May 2017 8:22 am

Yes, I also have been saying that this scenario of demise, decline and collapse will be universal. We are too economically dependent ie. trade , too dependent on FF, have too many people unable to survive off grid and finally too much already demise of Environment too enable the support naturally of many of our world population. So, given all these factors once can only accept that world population will experience severe dieoff and global civilization collapse. Finally, the precise disruptions and convulsions of this process will be uneven in time/space but it will be an inexorable process worldwide

Cloggie on Thu, 18th May 2017 9:08 am

What you are doing is projecting a US collapse as a win for your new Eurasian century.

I do not believe in US “collapse” or of anybody else. What I am saying that the whole idea that the US is strong enough to dominate the rest, euphemistically described as a “second American Century” (PNAC), will collapse, not the US itself.

Europe and China are catching up and Russia has a somewhat ascending trajectory.

America will become a (big) “normal country”, not “exceptionalist”.

And the empire with hundreds of foreign bases is largely going to be dismantled, not necessarily as a result of war but because of the realization of the futility of it all as well as the inability to pay for it all, once the dollar will no longer be the sole reserve currency and other countries will demand balanced trade.

makati1 on Thu, 18th May 2017 9:32 am

Cloggie, we share a similar view of the situation. The loss of the Dollar as the world reserve currency is going to bring down the empire in the near future. The IMF is pushing the SDR as the new world reserve currency along with Russia, China and a number of other countries. It is only a matter of time, or one financial ’emergency’, away. The “Great Leveling” is becoming a reality.

efarmer on Thu, 18th May 2017 9:35 am

The article starts with the simple notion, that the stone age, bronze age, and iron age did not end due to running out of stone, bronze, or iron. Did any of these materials provide the energy to exponentially grow the population to 7.4 billion before moving on? Second, the term white diesel applied to lithium is akin to calling your wallet a money generator or a jug a water source. The author is an alchemist who is pursuing converting lithium into gold.

GregT on Thu, 18th May 2017 10:07 am

I wonder if Trump has come to the full realization yet as to how precarious his ‘situation’ really is?

joe on Thu, 18th May 2017 10:15 am

The Trump admin has more leaks in it than Ive ever seen. Its also hard to know because so far there is no smoking gun proof of anything. Nixon was stupid enough to let his buddies break into the dnc to find out what they really knew. Trump probobly doesnt care. Thats an important difference. The rest is the media printing anything and everything. When Baghdadi is finally caught and killed the media will say Obama did it, things are that bad. But they need proof of wrong doing. So far, bupkis.

Cloggie on Thu, 18th May 2017 12:03 pm

I wonder if Trump has come to the full realization yet as to how precarious his ‘situation’ really is?

He is as aware of his situation as anybody standing handcuffed in front of a firing squad.

JuanP on Thu, 18th May 2017 3:32 pm

Greg “I wonder if Trump has come to the full realization yet as to how precarious his ‘situation’ really is?” I doubt it. My impression of Trump is that he is so narcissistic that he is probably completely disconnected from reality. People like him usually live in imaginary worlds. They are training him, but he won’t make a good trainee. I think he will behave erratically and will be hard to manage but they won’t let him get away with more than they can afford.